damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's JournalThe Endless March of Police Brutality—7 Stories From Just This Week
Amid the new wave of protests in Ferguson, the sad and tragic cycle continues."
September 19, 2014
From Ferguson, Missouri to Staten Island, New York, it seems like a new story about police brutality breaks every day. Here are some recent incidents of police violence from around the nation that you may not have heard about. Because honestly, who can keep up?"
1. 22-year-old black man police claim they shot in self-defense was actually shot from behind
2. 17-year-old is in critical condition after being tased, stepped on and allowed to fall
3. Milwaukee police officer won’t be punished for lying about witnessing an illegal strip and cavity search
4. Officer caught beating a suspect on video is suspended…two months later.
5. Police department famous for police brutality hosts NRA-sponsored law enforcement shooting competition
6. Police commander and Renaissance man of brutality is finally indicted
7. Police threaten to brutalize man if he reports that they brutalized him
Details at link: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/endless-march-police-brutality-7-stories-just-week?page=0%2C0
Expert who did Michael Brown autopsy agrees that chokehold by officer caused NYC man's death
NEW YORK (AP) -- An expert forensic pathologist hired by the family of a New York City man whose death in a police chokehold this summer was ruled a homicide has agreed with the findings of the city's medical examiner.
Dr. Michael Baden said Friday at a press conference outside the medical examiner's Manhattan headquarters that there was hemorrhaging on Eric Garner's neck indicative of neck compressions.
Baden is a former New York City medical examiner. Last month, he conducted an autopsy of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old man fatally shot by a police officer in August in the Missouri town of Ferguson.
The 43-year-old Garner died following a July confrontation with police on Staten Island."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NY_POLICE_CHOKEHOLD_DEATH_NYOL-?SITE=NYSCH&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
New Police Oversight Board passed by council
On Wednesday the Albuquerque City Council unanimously passed an ordinance to create the new Police Oversight Board."
The new "POB" has the power to subpoena witnesses and police officers in its investigation of civilian complaints and police-involved shootings.
These changes come after dozens of police-involved shootings and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ investigation found APD has a pattern and practice of excessive force. The DOJ noted the civilian oversight in Albuquerque was lacking resources and funding.
The new POB will have a budget of $750,000, or 1 percent of APD's budget.
The Board will primarily be responsible for investigating all civilian complaints against police officers, as well as police involved shootings."
*The ordinance was sent to Mayor Richard Berry's desk. There may be parts of it that he won't agree with; for example, the council took away the Mayor's power to approve people appointed to the Oversight Board."
http://www.koat.com/news/new-police-oversight-board-passed-by-council/28145696
Former Birmingham police officer to spend year in federal prison following re-sentencing
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Former Birmingham police detective Corey Hooper today was sentenced to serve a year and a day in federal prison for his 2012 conviction on an excessive force charge.
A federal appeals court earlier this year ruled the judge in that case didn't impose a tough enough sentence after Hooper was convicted of hitting a handcuffed man.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in May vacated the five-year probationary sentence and ordered U.S. District Court Judge Inge P. Johnson to re-sentence Hooper. "
*Hooper is to report to the designated prison on Dec. 1 to begin his sentence. She said she wants to give time to the prison system to find a prison that would be safe for a former police officer so he wouldn't have to be held in a jail while awaiting a space to open up. A jail would not be an appropriate place, she said.
With adding the extra day to the 12-month sentence, Hooper will be allowed to accrue good times, which would allow him to be released in about 10 months. The judge also said she would recommend the prison system place Hooper in a halfway house as soon as possible, which would allow him more freedom."
*Meadows said that the case is serious because a police officer was involved. He said Hooper deserved a punishment that would serve as a deterrent to other officers.
Meadows said he would have liked the new sentence to have been closer to the lower end of the guideline range (70 months). "A year and a day sends a message to other police officers that before they decide to haul off and hit a handcuffed suspect there are consequences to that kind of criminal behavior," he said."
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2014/09/former_birmingham_police_offic_1.html
NYPD 72nd Pct. Officers Assault Street Vendor in Sunset Park
#t=146One minute into this YouTube video, you could see an officer pushing a helpless woman to the side while other officers engage in shoving matches with the citizens. Then a male officer gets into a wrestling match of sorts with an unidentified woman before officers are seen bringing a man to the ground while a crowd congregates to watch. One man screamed "you (expletive) hit him."
Sirens blared as the NYPD took control of the situation before a male officer is seen kicking the unidentified man already on the ground at the 2:23 mark of the video. "
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2014/9/17/nypd-investigates-police-brutality-sunset-park
Inmates Aren’t the Only Victims of the Prison-Industrial Complex
Prison-reform advocates tend to focus on the plight of those behind bars. But the enforcers of this draconian system are victims as well."
The worst part of Dave’s job as a death-row guard happened early morning on the day of an execution. After taking the inmate for his final shower and instructing him to change his clothes for his last visit with his family, Dave would bring him back to his cell. Officers would then escort him in handcuffs to a prison van, which would take him from the Polunsky Unit in the east Texas town of Livingston to the death chamber at another prison in Huntsville, forty miles away.
“They have that look—like they know what’s coming,” Dave (not his real name) says. “Man, it’s hard to look at them in the eyes.”
*But serving as a cog in a machine whose ultimate aim is to destroy human life takes a toll. After eight-and-a-half years working on death row, Dave started having nightmares. He suffered from high blood pressure. “Even the younger guys get high blood pressure working there,” he says. “There were times I’d get to the entrance [of the prison], go through screening and do an about-turn, go back into the parking lot and call in sick.” So Dave transferred from death row."
*“Prison functions in entirely the opposite way from the small, healthy family or community,” says Frank Ochberg, a psychiatrist who sat on the panel that went on to define post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the 1970s and who has served as an expert witness for countless inmates on death row. “It does to a human being what a zoo does to a wild animal.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/181607/inmates-arent-only-victims-prison-industrial-complex
Report: Law enforcement in Los Angeles County kills one person every week
A new study from the Los Angeles Youth Justice Coalition depicts a stunning level of cop-on-civilian violence"
For the first time in a long while, the mainstream of American society is thinking and talking about the use of lethal force by officers of the law — even if the nation lacks a reliable database through which it could analyze the problem. Most of the focus has been on the behavior of law enforcement officers in Missouri and New York City, a new report makes a compelling and chilling case that the severity of the issue in the greater Los Angeles area is greater than we think.
Produced by the Los Angeles Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), an activist organization that focuses on how often and why police decide to use lethal force, the study, entitled “Don’t Shoot to Kill,” claims that since the year 2000 alone, 589 people were killed by law enforcement in Los Angeles County. Since just 2007, the number killed has been 315. Overall, that’s about 1 death per-week, YJC says, with the rate of homicidal force increasing during periods that saw an overall decrease in homicide crime."
*The YJC report offers a number of detailed recommendations to help reduce police and community violence. It calls on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a civil rights investigation into officer-involved shootings and the use of force countywide. "
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/report_los_angeles_county_officers_kill_one_person_every_week/
Is Obedience the Only Way to Avoid Police Brutality?
“Maybe you shouldn’t just be obedient,” Reginald Jones-Sawyer, Sr. told the crowd. Instead of just teaching children to be meek and compliant with law enforcement, “maybe we should start teaching our young sons to ask for IDs—ask them to remember names and badge numbers" when they're stopped by police. Maybe we should all be more vigilant, he said.
“When you see our young people stopped, you stop and start recording what you see," he said. Let members of law enforcement know that their every move will be scrutinized. "Obviously," though, "with the flash off"—the police don't need another excuse to shoot.
I didn’t expect Jones-Sawyer, a Democratic member of the California State Assembly, to sound like such a firebrand when I first showed up to the hearing on police violence organized by the California and Hawaii chapters of the NAACP. He’s a politician and his job is to legislate, to diffuse community anger over out-of-control police by channeling it into non-binding resolutions and stern floor speeches. But speaking to me in the lobby of the California African American Museum in Los Angeles—after I assured him I do not work for a porn site—he said that what he really wants to do is “start a grassroots effort to combat [police brutality].”
* Right now, we’re acting like victims,” Jones-Sawyer told me. Indeed, he taught his own children to be passive around police to stay alive; to keep their hands at “ten o'clock and two o'clock on the steering wheel, look forward, don’t make any sudden moves.” But one day, he said, his oldest son challenged him: "Why's the responsibility on us to not get beaten and killed by police? Shouldn’t it be on the police to stop brutalizing us?"
His answer was glib, but not wrong: "Because you could die." But it did get him thinking"
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/is-obedience-the-only-way-to-avoid-police-brutality-915
Police Officer Caught On Camera Savagely Beating Girlfriend – Not Facing Arrest
Video at link: http://www.mintpressnews.com/police-officer-caught-on-camera-savagely-beating-girlfriend-not-facing-arrest/196570/
Vietnam urged to tackle "alarming" rate of police abuse
(Reuters) - Abuses by Vietnam's powerful police force are occurring at an alarming rate, a rights group said on Tuesday and it urged the government to rein-in offenders and create bodies to investigate complaints of beatings, torture and killings.
Tracking four years of alleged abuse of suspects in custody, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Vietnam's Communist government needed to recognise the scale of the problem and urgently initiate police reforms."
Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang last week said during a hearing of the justice committee of Vietnam's parliament that action was being taken against policemen accused of abuses and cases had risen from 2011 to the end of last year.
Quang said that of the 828 police accused of "infringing upon judicial activities", 23 were charged with using corporal punishment. Quang did not disclose if any had been jailed.
Robertson described the hearing as remarkable but said far more needed to be done.
"For now, it's clear that the Vietnam police are mostly getting away with these abuses," he said. "
At least we aren't alone.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/vietnam-police-idINKBN0HB0VI20140916
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